


The Eleventh

by vardasvapors (cynewulf)



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Dramatic Irony, Elf/Human Relationship(s), Gen, Númenor, Second Age, Uncle-Nephew Relationship, War of the Elves and Sauron, if by nephew you mean 10 generations of descendants, immortality and mortality, the lopsided line of eärendil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 00:06:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14320056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynewulf/pseuds/vardasvapors
Summary: To historians, in 1700 Second Age, Tar-Minastir of Númenor saved Middle Earth from the forces of Sauron. To Elrond Half-Elven, in 1700 Second Age, he reunited with his ten-times great-nephew, saw his brother's people achieve the zenith of their glory, and let slip more than he ought about his choice of immortality.





	The Eleventh

**Author's Note:**

> Originally [written here](http://vardasvapors.tumblr.com/post/172214159969/but-now-sauron-attempted-to-gain-the-mastery-of) on my tumblr.
> 
> Note: This story assumes that the dates in the Line of Elros in the Unfinished Tales, showing the year of Tar-Telperiën's abdication of and Tar-Minaster's ascent of the throne as 1730, are correct; and therefore assumes that the conflicting statements suggesting Tar-Minastir was already King in the year 1700, from Concerning Galadriel and Celeborn, also from the Unfinished Tales (the italicized passages below), was a minor chronological error.

> _But now Sauron attempted to gain the mastery of Eriador: Lórinand could wait. But as he ravaged the lands, slaying or drawing off all the small groups of Men and hunting the remaining Elves, many fled to swell Elrond’s host to the northward. Now Sauron’s immediate purpose was to take Lindon…and marched west towards the land of Gil-galad, ravaging as he went. But his force was weakened by the necessity of leaving a strong detachment to contain Elrond…._
> 
> _…Gil-galad called on Númenor for aid. Then Tar-Minastir the King sent out a great navy; but it was delayed, and did not reach the coasts of Middle-earth until the year 1700. By that time Sauron had mastered all Eriador, save only besieged Imladris, and had reached the line of the River Lhûn…when in the very nick of time the great armament of Tar-Minastir came in; and Sauron’s host was heavily defeated and driven back._

This was how Master Elrond of Rivendell, lately of Lindon, Half-Elven, remembered it afterwards —

— the ships’ hail that he had awaited for five years, awaited with every breath, ringing suddenly above the doomed battle below the river Lhûn, above the clamor of encroaching death in his ears. He had flung all the troops he could muster upon Sauron’s rearguard with no hope of victory, only of time. No one else had listened but he. No one else had heard, the first moment when it fell upon his ears from afar more sweet and keen than the pipes of the Ulumúri —  the war-cry of the conch-shells, heralding the shining fleet that poured into the river from the west and calling from the mountainside above the mouth of the sea.

He had come towards the river hunting the remnants of the Enemy’s force which he and the army of Lindon had obliterated between them, trying to block the siren call from his ears while duty held, but now all his quarry lay dead, mixed with the slaughter before the great army and their bows and missiles fearsome and bright, ranging far as the eye could see; and now he heeded them not, heeded nothing at all. He fell upon his knees in the mud as if struck through the ribs by a spear — the bliss was no less piercing. In five years not once had his tears overtaken him — perhaps some of his soldiers and lieutenants were about now, stunned at the sight of their unflappable and implacable general kneeling on the ragged battlefield and sobbing so that he could neither stand nor move, but afterwards he did not remember, for he did not see them. He had eyes only for the scorched country safe at last before the wide ribbon of the Lhûn, and the miles upon miles of the blazing white thicket of sails, curved and proud, flashing the crest of Númenor.

The dazzling morning light was setting afire the smoke and ruin of Eriador, and their deliverers in their shining arms and helms and coats in shapes of sea-shells and sea-foam, and the prows of the fleet of the west arrayed all along the riverbanks. They rent the air with victory upon their trumpets, and the ground shuddered beneath their marching feet. There, Elrond saw him. There was Minastir, Minastir the Queen’s heir, Minastir whose birth he had seen to, Minastir his kinsman, tall and proud as a ship’s mast, his grin as dazzling white as the rising sun, striding towards him over the churned up mud and debris of the battlefield with his banner aloft in the breeze, and Elrond thought that if the pride in his chest swelled any further it would burst.

“Hail, _Eldalië, Atanatari!”_ Minastir called, and his voice was mighty. “From Tar-Telpërien, Queen of Númenor, to all friends of Gil-galad, greetings! Victory is ours!”

He tried to reply and could not, could not see now through the tears blinding him. A blur of bright armor and Minastir was crouching before him. Elrond felt enormous hands gently pulling off his helm and brushing back the shaggy hair that had fallen over his eyes, tipping up his chin to look into his face, thumbs swiping over the tears pouring down his cheeks. Elrond covered the hands cupping his face with his own, blinking, trying to see. Minastir had his aunt’s strong nose and his grandfather’s jutting jaw and high forehead, dark hair escaping battle plaits of a grown warrior, but the same bright eyes, the same playful smile, that he had worn long ago. Ten kings there had been now, and each one struck him to the heart with a blade unlike any of the ones before, he loved each one unlike any before, and yet, he loved some more —

“Why do you weep Master Elrond? We have won, have we not? Did you hear us? Did you see us?”

“Little One,” Elrond rasped, breathless. It was not the right term for a general to address the crown prince of an allied kingdom, but as close as the man before him was the tiny child with fat dimpled cheeks and untrimmed curls beaming at him from behind the Queen’s robes. Strong, and so tall, taller than him, and look, look, he had come to save them, how great, how valiant, how brave. He caught at Minastir’s knee, bent forward and kissed it, then caught a hand and kissed it too, kissed the back and the sword-calloused palm, and the fingers, one by one. Again, again.

“Ah, Little One, what took you so long? I have waited for you…”

Minastir laughed then, there on the battlefield triumphant, with his victory spread over the great lands and his booming voice deep and warm in his chest, vibrant with the prime of life and no touch yet of age. He swept Elrond up into his arms with a whoop, mail and all, and spun him around as easily as Elrond once had spun him, laughing, upon the beach of far Andúnië when Minastir was nine years old, and Elrond clung to the broad shoulders and wept until he could not catch his breath.

“Why so surprised, Old Man?” Minastir’s voice had all the pride of youth in it. “Did I not say we would come for you, even under the darkest shadow, if I lived to see such times?”

“I! I surprised!” He began to laugh uncontrollably amid his tears. “Impertinent — ! Not once did I doubt you would come, I only feared I would be slain ere I could see it. Dear one, dearest one, how you have grown, look what you have done! What blessings have been ordered for me—“

“Oh shh, shh! You are hysterical, and exhausted, and starving too!” But Minastir sounded more pleased than embarrassed. “We tarried too long, and your part was the harder by far. I fear you do not seem blessed with much luck to me.”

“Do I not?” Elrond could not lift his head, the world was still spinning and he could feel that he was about to faint, but he could not still his tongue — he never could, whether he ought to or no. “Tsk, you shall understand when you are older, what fortune is. Such joy is mine, that I have lived to know such kin as mine! How proud, how proud my brother would be of you! But he could not be as proud as I. Oh. Not so proud as I…”

This time Minastir’s laugh quavered soft and short, and surprised. “You are to be envied, then, the chance to see these times?”

“Or to be envied the years I lived to reach it,” Elrond murmured, words like innocent thorns heedless, unhearing. “I would not have missed this moment for anything, anything, in this world or beyond it…”

He did not see what look might have crossed Minastir’s face, or hear what words might have passed his lips. The black swoon blotted out the world, and he remembered not what followed. But in the moment before it fell, though in that moment he knew not what it meant, he felt the discontented waver and halt of Minastir’s steps, the brief jealous tightening of Minastir’s cradling arms around his knees and shoulders, the sharp, longing catch of breath in Minastir’s chest beneath his mail, and remembered them —

As vivid as all that his fortune had let him see, he remembered them. In all the centuries after, and all the ages of Númenor’s doom that followed, like a brand upon his skin he remembered them. Again, again, and again.

 

> _XI: Tar-Minastir_
> 
> _This name he had because he built a high tower upon the hill of Oromet, nigh to Andúnië and the west shores, and thence would spend great part of his days gazing westward. For the yearning was grown strong in the hearts of the Númenóreans. He loved the Eldar but envied them….._

 


End file.
